The RPG I'm making is a world war/civilization emulator where each player plays as the leader of a country of their own design. You start off with 18th century (1700s) technology. You can go all the way to space tech but I don't want to design a tech tree. Also I want players to have a lot of control over what tech they develop. I'm having trouble coming up with a formula for resource and monetary costs for the stuff that players imagine; as well as research time.
Resources my game has as of now:
- metal
- general construction materials
- electrical
- money
- fuel
- people
Welcome to theRPGsite!
The first question you have to ask is what is it you actually want to do for pricing. Are you trying to be 'historically accurate' in some sense, or do you want to have ease of play as your main goal?
What sort of role are players playing that has them living for centuries, developing technology, amassing resources, and also needing prices for weapons and vehicles? Or do the GMs designing settings do the first things, and the players do the last two?